Anse de Maldormé

Anse de Maldormé is a small cove with a strip of pebbles and rocks where bathers now settle. Above the water stands the white building of the hotel and restaurant Le Petit Nice—“Little Nice.” Its history began with a purchase by installment.

In the autumn of nineteen seventeen, the baker and pastry chef Germain Passédat bought Villa Corinthe here. Before that, he had made his living from bakeries, cafés, and small restaurants: he bought an establishment, got the business going, sometimes sold it, and moved on to the next one. He still had two years left to pay for the villa. Germain turned it into a restaurant, added two floors with hotel rooms, and gave the establishment a resort-style name, hoping to attract English visitors familiar with the French Riviera and Nice’s Promenade des Anglais.

Soon, Germain’s wife died suddenly. Alone, he was already planning to give up the business, but his brother Adrien and Adrien’s wife came to help: Adrien became the maître d’, and his wife took charge of the hotel. Thus the Passédat business became family-run long before the surname appeared in gastronomic guides.

During the Second World War, a regular guest, Mr. Mayer, who was Jewish, told acquaintances about the hotel. There were more and more Jewish guests. According to Germain’s son’s recollections, the Passédat brothers passed them off as relatives. When it was decided to requisition the building, Germain and Adrien managed to get the guests out unharmed, while they themselves left for the department of Tarn-et-Garonne, where their family came from.

After the war, the Passédats searched for their former guests. The Mayers and Hutto were found; the Raff family was not among those who returned. In nineteen forty-five, Germain came to Maldormé and found his establishment devastated. He was seventy-four years old. He restored the hotel and reopened the restaurant.

The two-story addition that Germain built for the first guests has survived. Le Petit Nice still belongs to the Passédat family; its kitchen is run by the founder’s grandson, Gérald Passedat. In two thousand eight, the restaurant became the first in Marseille to receive three MICHELIN Guide stars. Its menu includes dozens of varieties of Mediterranean fish—beside the very cove where Germain once decided that Marseille’s coast could be sold to guests under the name of Little Nice.